Sandbox MUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA Issue 88 | 3rd July 2013 INSIDE… Social security: artists build their own networks Campaigns Facebook and Twitter might PAGE 6: have the reach, but artists are The latest projects from the increasingly looking to own digital marketing arena >> their social relationship with Campaign Focus fans more directly. Burned PAGE 7: by the decline of Myspace The Naked & Famous use and endless changes to Snapchat to engage with fans Facebook, they are focusing >> less on social media Tools promiscuity (being on every PAGE 8: site, no matter the size) and Audiam >> instead building their own Behind the Campaign destination. This obviously PAGES 9 & 10: costs time and money, but Queens Of The Stone Age >> the D2C opportunities and Charts security over who owns PAGE 11: the data are helping tip the Digital charts >> balance. Issue 88 | 3rd July 2013 | Page 2 continued… As anyone who works in digital marketing a different purpose.” Instead, the key for will tell you, there is no shortage of social Michelsen lies in building identities around networks to be worked, serviced and specific “interests, affinities and movements” generally updated. And it is a number that – in this case music fans. Michelsen has not is getting bigger by the day as new services always been so positive about Facebook, launch and existing services add their own though: when launching Backplane’s social features. dedicated Guns N’ Roses site, Paradise City, in February 2013, he told TechCrunch that the So why, with all these easy to use tools reach of Facebook Pages “is not what they readily available, would anyone choose to want it to be”. create their own social community? It seems an illogical, thankless task. And yet more artists and managers are doing so led, by Cost versus control Lady Gaga and her tech-savvy manager Troy Creating a full-on Little Monsters-style service Carter. is a time-intensive and costly experience – one that you can imagine only being open to the In February 2012, the singer beta launched likes of Lady Gaga or Guns N’ Roses. And yet her own Little Monsters social network via Backplane already has a competitor in the startup Backplane (which she has a stake in), field: Entrago, which soft launched in May giving her fans a space to share Gaga-related with an iPhone app called The Chris Brown content and interact with fellow fans online. Channel, a dedicated Chris Brown/Entrago The functionality of the site, which launched These services can include paid online Muse’s and Keane’s official sites being good website and CB Entrago YouTube channel. out of beta five months later, was nothing fan-club areas, like Robbie Williams’ (now examples of this mix. While the choice of Brown to launch the revolutionary, resembling a mixture of defunct) Inner Sanctum, McFly’s Super City service may be controversial (to put in mildly), Of course, none of this comes cheap in time Pinterest and Reddit, but Gaga’s decision to or The Wanted World, whereby fans fork the appearance of a potential competitor or money – consider the five months it took launch a standalone platform alongside her out to access content in an exclusive online to Backplane in creating artist-focussed for Little Monsters to come out of beta – and existing social media accounts was telling. area; free online members areas, where fans communities shows the potential of this area. this must be balanced against the potential have to leave their details to get full access to Backplane CEO Matt Michelsen told benefits. What’s more, the launch of these official online forums and content; and even the ever-more- Mashable that Little Monsters was not communities is part of a wider trend for artists popular dedicated artist ecommerce sites. Luckily, then, the move towards artist- intended to compete with Facebook (where either building their own digital platforms owned platforms has some considerable Gaga has close to 58m likes). “We love These may seem a disparate mix, but they or using their existing online properties to advantages. The first of these is financial: Facebook — it’s a very powerful tool,” he all have the common goal of cutting out greater effect – in both cases essentially the Inner Sanctum may have proved explained. “This is not a product meant third parties online. Many artist sites now cutting out the digital middleman. controversial among Robbie fans who didn’t to destroy or compete with Facebook. It’s incorporate elements of all three, with Issue 88 | 3rd July 2013 | Page 3 continued… want to pay £25 a year for access to his inner work for their business model, NOT the artists. artist in question could do about it, other Musicians and labels have considerable circle, but thousands of people apparently There’s always a threat being on a platform than change their approach. experience of being burned in this way, signed up, making it a useful money spinner you don’t control or can’t back up,” he says. according to Island Records director of Indeed, we have already seen several (plus they also got early access to tickets digital, Glenn Cooper. “Some artists were Social sites, in other words, own artists’ examples of Facebook changing what artists for his Close Encounters tour in 2006). severely impacted by over-investing their connections to their fans despite all the work can do with their sites. In March 2012, it did Meanwhile, 15,000 people joined McFly’s digital marketing strategy on Myspace. Over artists, labels and managers put into their away with the ability to set a default landing Super City in the first few weeks, at a cost a matter of weeks their ‘friends’ disappeared online profile. And that could potentially page or “welcome tab” within Pages, with of £40 a year or £6 a month. Artists’ own to Facebook and other platforms,” he be damaging: in one (admittedly unlikely) new visitors instead directed to the Timeline ecommerce sites clearly have a financial explains. scenario, should Facebook decide to put an wall. It was a move that created considerable benefit too, although, again, this must be emphasis on text over pictures and other consternation among marketers and bands, “Facebook is now a very powerful marketing balanced against what the artist actually media, then that would be detrimental for all of whom had become familiar with the and CRM platform, but it effectively throttles has to sell. An all-powerful D2C store will be artists who have communicated largely to old set up and were powerless to prevent the communication. Even though fans have a costly white elephant if you only have two their fans via photos. And there is little the change. ‘liked’ an artist and expressed an interest T-shirts on offer. in receiving more info, the reality is artists Adding elements such as members’ areas, and labels are only able to hit approximately forums and ecommerce to an artist’s website 15% of these fans through posts – unless we can act as a virtuous circle, according to Saari want to pay to hit them. In essence artists Ltd. founder Nikke Osterback. “Ecommerce and labels need to focus on building our own only works if your website is highly business, not just other people’s businesses.” trafficked,” he says. “Your website can only Tied to this is the issue of data, which has get good sales if you have: a) a high volume been billed recently as everything from “the of visitors; and b) engaged visitors. The social new oil” to “the new currency”. These claims elements applied to a website obviously may be somewhat exaggerated, but clearly increase engagement, hence increasing data is vital to the new digital economy, with sales.” companies in the US spending more than $2bn a year on third-party consumer data a Owning the fan relationship and the year, according to a Forrester report which fan data came out towards the end of 2011. Far more important than money, though, Your data, then, clearly has a value. Not are the twin issues of control and data, as for nothing is Facebook valued at around Osterback explains. “Many social sites and $100bn. What’s more, as the recent PRISM platforms keep changing their algorithm to scandal has comprehensively shown, this is Issue 88 | 3rd July 2013 | Page 4 continued… an immensely sensitive area. Leaving this via the artist website/database on behalf gains “over short-term gains, such as chart data in the hands of a third party, then, seems of the artist too,” explains Alastair Smith, success”. Alastair Smith, ecommerce and artist both wasteful and insensitive, particularly ecommerce and artist partnerships manager partnerships manager at Universal With this move towards the longer when most music fans will eagerly hand over at Universal Music UK. “This provides us with Music UK, on Wanted World: term potentially comes a change in the their details for access to forums, pictures data we didn’t previously have access to, and relationship between artists, their manager “We focus on making the artist website ‘the and the odd free download. (Again, though, access to more people who have invested hub’ of the digital campaign for the artist. and labels. The idea that record labels are it is worth making the point that data can money into the act – not just perhaps those This also now includes D2C ecommerce only interested in short-term gains may be be captured in a number of simple ways, who entered a competition or entered their activity, which provides us with even richer slightly unfair, but it is still probably true purchaser data alongside the data we get including simply going to a gig with pen email in return for a free download.” to say that managers and artists have a from fanclub areas and social communities.